My Skye
by How I Rescued the Potato Salad
Summary: Everyone said her father was dead. Yet she knew her mother still waited... R and R


_disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize_

a/n This story hit me on the head and bounce downonto my half-filled sheet of Indirect Reasoning during Math class. Don't believe me? See the bruise! haha nevermind... I hope you enjoy this.

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**My Little Skye**

All she remembers of her daddy is the feel of his hair. How it would scratch and tickle her cheek when he'd pick her up and swing her through the air. And yet how it would feel so soft under her fingers when she grabbed fistfuls of it.

She remembers how her mum locked herself quietly in her room that night the Grey Man, Daddy's friend, visited with a long, thin wooden box and tears in his eyes. And how her mum told her the next morning, with dead eyes and a hollow voice, that Daddy had gone missing while away on work in northern Wales and that all the Aurors thought he was dead.

She remembers how her mum drew out a broken wand, with an ashen feather poking out of it, and stared down at it for a long time.

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Now she is five years old and when she calculates on her little fingers, she realizes that it's been almost three years since Daddy disappeared. Since then, Mum hasn't cried, but she knows that Mum still thinks of Daddy. She steps into her mum's bedroom every time she hears Mum crying and calling out to Daddy in her sleep. 

It makes her sad to see her mum looking so lonely in a bed too big for her, so she'll climb under the covers and lay down beside her. And then she'll hug her mummy and gently pat her head.

She knows that somewhere out there, Daddy's proud of her for looking after Mum so well.

There still are the same pictures on the walls. Mum and Daddy's wedding, Mum and Daddy flying, Daddy and herself when she was a baby, Daddy swinging her around through the air. She likes to watch him in those pictures until her eyes water. Trying to manufacture memories of him in her mind. One of her tall uncles tells her that her eyes are just like Daddy's, but her red-gold hair is truly her mum's. His wife, her bushy-haired aunt, tells her that she is as inquisitive as her father was. And almost as lively as her mother is

- was.

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Each day, her mother becomes more and more like the laughing woman in the pictures. She doesn't cry in her sleep as often as before. When she comes home from work, she calls out her name, Lily, Lily! With her arms out, ready for a hug. 

Then she'll fly down the stairs and into her mother's arms and give her hugs and kisses. Her mum's laugh bubbles from her chest and makes her smile. Then she'll slide back to the floor as her mum lets her bags fall onto the kitchen table before giving her a slightly faded smile, picking up her wand and asking her what she'd like for dinner.

On Fridays, Mum takes her out to Diagon Alley to shop. Sometimes, she even takes her to Muggle London, just to look. On the weekends, she takes her to the Burrow.

Time has added new pictures to the walls at home, pictures of her, flying on her toy broomstick, making cookies with Mum, playing with her cousins, chasing the gnomes in the garden at the Burrow, her uncles giving her rides on their _real_ broomsticks, her birthday cake exploding while her grandma tries to cut it. But the same pictures of Daddy are still on the wall. And Daddy's wand is still waits in its long wooden casket, over the fireplace.

Where her mum can see it.

* * *

Tonight is special, says her mum, because tomorrow she's turning six. Mum smiles down at her and tells her that she's growing up, while she charms the spaghetti to cook to precisely _al dente_. 

Later on, after she's been tucked into her little cot in her lavender room, she wonders vaguely if her birthday cake will explode again this year. She'll go with her mum to the Burrow tomorrow, and she can't wait to see her cousins again.

She hears a thud against the door downstairs, someone knocking. Yellow light creeps into her room from the crack under the door. Her mother's house-robes and nightgown make _shooshing_ noises as Mum walks past her room, her slippers slapping against the stairs. She hears the door slowly open, her mum's gasp and then a man's low voice, faintly familiar. Her mother's voice travels quickly up to her ears. She hears her mother's gasp become a laugh that rapidly becomes a sob. The sob is quickly muffled.

She sits up in her bed and stares at the steady flow of light seeping into her room from the hallway. She quickly gets out of bed and grabs her floppy, stuffed stag in her sweaty palm, crushing it against her chest as she opens her door and steps into the blinding light of the hallway. Picking up the skirt of her nightgown, so she does not trip, she tiptoes across the hall to the stairs. She slowly descends the stairs, easing her weight carefully onto each step as the murmurs from the front hall grow louder and more distinct. The last step creaks. She tiptoes through the dark kitchen, her bare feet making no sound. The early spring draft curls around her ankles, making her shiver slightly. She peeks around the door.

Her mum's arms are wound tightly around a man's neck and the man has his arms wrapped just as tightly around her mum. A pair of cracked glasses lies forgotten beside their feet. Her mum is crying softly into the crook of the man's neck as the man tenderly kisses her hair, her head, her ear, her shoulder. Whispering her name.

Her mum suddenly senses her standing quietly around the corner and turns away from the man to look at her, never pulling out of his embrace or dropping her arms from his shoulders. She is laughing and crying and the same time.

Lily, she calls.

Still holding tightly to her stag, she steps completely out into their view. The man holding her mother has long, messy black hair and dark bristles around his chin, like he hasn't shaved for a week. His dirty, baggy robes that hang loosely from his shoulders, make him look small but he is taller than her mum. He's been crying happy tears, just like her mum. He looks at her and she back at him.

Green meets green.

Skye? He asks, using his nickname for her. My little Skye?

She looks at him again. She knows him.

_Skye._ No one called her that for almost three years. And for almost three years, she stared at his picture till her eyes watered. She needn't even look up at his forehead.

She knows him.

'Hi Daddy.'

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Read and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE **REVIEW! **(constructive criticism is much appreciated) 


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